The Edge of Strange Hollow

by Gabrielle K. Byrne

  When she dozed off at last, her sleep was full of dreams. Images of Dog filled her head. Memories of their soft fur—and the way they would bowl her over each time she came home. She dreamed of Two’s eyes, and Brutus’s bravery, and Eta … sweet Eta, with all her wise looks.

  She dreamed that her mother was calling for her. She dreamed of her father apologizing—asking for forgiveness, but she wasn’t sure for what, because his words were jumbled and foggy. Even Nula made an appearance. Poppy dreamed that she woke up to find the pooka staring down at her from the tree branches above them. She was crying, and her blue tears dripped down on Poppy’s head.

  When she opened her eyes for real, there were streaks of pale blue through the branches above her, but there was no one there. Just the breeze rattling the Holly Oak’s leaves, and beyond them, the fading stars.

  Mack sat with his back against a boulder. She got up and moved to sit next to him. When the sun finally rose, he had dozed off again, even though he was still sitting up. They had a long way to go to get home. And they still needed to come up with a plan to get her parents back.

  The sharp ache raced back in and she shoved all her thoughts deep, far into the shadows of her mind where she wouldn’t have to look at them. Instead, she allowed the only thought that mattered to simmer where she could feel the heat of it, and remember. She would get them back. Somehow, she would get her parents back. And then she’d find a way to save Dog.

  At the end of the dock, she rang the bell—felt its tolling roll over her body, but she didn’t even look up as she dropped the coins in the Boatman’s hand. She stepped in and sat in the floor of the boat with her eyes closed, and didn’t once bother to wonder which route he had chosen for them this time.

  Stumbling back onto the broken-down dock where they had started made Poppy want to cry again—but she had no tears left. The last time she had been here, they had all been together. Mack pointed out some berry bushes that were safe, and they gorged until their stomachs ached. Poppy took out the last of the bread and cheese from the market, too.

  “Mack?”

  “Hm?”

  “Are you sure you want to do this?”

  He made a face. “Do what?”

  “Help me. Are you sure you don’t want to go home—see your family?”

  Mack frowned. “I’m sure.”

  “But—”

  “No, Poppy. I’m sure.” He paused. “Unless you don’t want my help?”

  “No! It’s not that.”

  He started walking. “It’s not your fault, you know.”

  “What?”

  “It’s not your fault—about Dog. And I didn’t know about Nula either.”

  “Maybe you didn’t know, but you had a feeling. You said you weren’t sure we should trust her.”

  He grunted. “I did—say that. But that was before we really knew Nula. And … and maybe I said it because I was being selfish, wanting to keep your friendship all to myself.”

  Poppy’s eyes jerked to his, and he laughed. “But I was wrong, okay?”

  “Well, we both know if I had listened to you, Dog would still be here.”

  “No. I was wrong about that too … about always being so cautious.” He stopped walking and turned to face her. “Rules are important—caution too. We need them.” He looked down at his feet and Poppy watched with amusement as he dug his toes down into the soil. “But just being careful all the time doesn’t always keep us safe,” Mack admitted wryly. “Sometimes you have to take chances.”

  Poppy swallowed and reached out to squeeze his hand. They stood that way a moment, then the quiet got strange and she let go.

  “Anyway.” Mack muttered as they started walking again. “You heard Nula. The Faery Queen already knew about Dog. She had her eye on them from the start—before you ever set foot in the forest. She would have found a way to get them.”

  “You really think so?”

  “I really do.”

  Her throat tightened. “If we can believe anything Nula said at all! Why did she lie to us? All that time! Why didn’t she just tell us? I hope I never—”

  But before Poppy had finished her sentence, Nula herself stepped out from behind a tree.

  She didn’t look at Poppy, but her eyes flicked briefly to Mack. Her voice was quiet. “Hi,” she said.

  “Are you following us?” Poppy cried.

  The wood seemed to grow still around them, listening.

  Mack shifted his feet. “Hi, Nula,” he said.

  Poppy glared. “What do you want?”

  Nula’s hands twisted in front of her. “I—I want to make it up.”

  “Make it up?” Poppy’s voice was high and tight. “Make it up? Make up that the Faery Queen took my Dog?”

  A blue flush had risen in Nula’s cheeks. Her tufted ears lay flat, hidden in her thick brown hair. “I’m sorry,” she pleaded. “I thought … I thought I belonged with them … the faeries, I mean. I thought—” She looked up, and her huge gold eyes met Poppy’s. “I didn’t think enough about what it would cost. But I was wrong, Poppy. I don’t belong with the Fae. I don’t … I don’t even want to be anywhere near them.” Her brows knit together making her face fierce. “They’re terrible.”

  For a moment Poppy couldn’t speak. Then she remembered the moment Brutus leaped for the bone—the moment Eta gave her plaintive cry, and rage washed over her. “She TOOK Dog, Nula! She—” Poppy’s throat closed. She swallowed, her voice dropping to a threatening whisper. “You lied to us—you were never our friend. You tricked us.”

  Poppy fought the urge to physically attack Nula—to hurt her the way she was hurting. Instead, she let out a roar that made Nula and Mack both jump, then stormed past them, her hands fisted at her sides. “I never want to see you again! Don’t ever come back!”

  She was a fair distance ahead when she realized Mack wasn’t with her. She spun around with his name on her lips, and froze. He was standing across the path from Nula, saying something. Nula was nodding.

  “Mack!” she shouted. He scowled at her, patted Nula’s arm, then turned slowly and walked away from her.

  When he caught up, Poppy folded her arms. “Good! I’m glad she’s gone. Why are you even talking to her? Dog’s gone because of her.”

  Mack arched one eyebrow. “No. Not really.”

  “What do you mean, not really. If it wasn’t for her…”

  “I told you, Pop. The Faery Queen would have found a way. She just used Nula—because she was lonely and because she knew they had something Nula wanted.”

  “Right.” She scoffed. “They had something she wanted … like what? Fancy parties and pretty outfits?”

  Mack raised an eyebrow. “That’s not what she wanted, Poppy. She wanted to be a part of something—and she thought it would, I don’t know, make her better?”

  “Well, too bad! She’s not better! And now she’s alone again!”

  “She’s a lot like you, Pop.”

  “What? How can you even say that right now?”

  Mack didn’t answer but considered her for a moment. “Anger is like acid.”

  “What? What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Mack leaned against a tree. “That’s what Ma tells me when I get angry. She says, anger is like acid. It takes all the shine off things, and eats at what’s underneath. She says we should treat it like sour milk.”

  Poppy turned around, her curiosity getting the better of her. “Sour … milk?”

  “Yeah.”

  Poppy waited for him to explain.

  He didn’t.

  “Okay, fine. How do you treat anger like sour milk?”

  He grinned at her. “I knew you couldn’t stand not knowing.” He pushed himself away from the tree. “You treat anger like sour milk by pouring it out. Getting rid of it.”

  “I’d like to pour sour milk on her.”

  He pulled a face. “I think you just did.”

  “Seriously, Mack. Don’t I have a right to be angry?”

&
nbsp; “Of course! I’m angry too. Just … not at Nula. Nula didn’t take Dog. She knows that lying to us was wrong … you can see that she feels it.”

  Poppy crossed her arms. “I think your mom’s wrong, Mack. Anger’s not like sour milk. Anger is a reminder.”

  “A reminder of what?” he asked, catching up with her.

  “A reminder of who to let close, and who to stay away from. A reminder that someone caused you pain.”

  “But then … don’t you ever forgive someone?”

  She frowned at him. “I don’t know if I can. I just know I want to yell at her more and that I’m not going to give up being angry until I’m good and done being angry.”

  They fell silent for a while. A woodpecker knocked against a tree in the distance. Poppy listened to the sound of their breathing as they hurried toward her house.

  Mack nose-sighed, next to her. “Well, it looks like there’s a storm rolling in, and at least there will be something in your pantry besides berries, tentaculars, and stale bread.”

  She rubbed her hands together. “We’ll eat. And then we’ll make a plan to get my parents. For real this time.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Poppy wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting when they first opened the front door—using the spare key hidden in the toad hole under the edge of the house—but she had been expecting something. Leaving home and breaking her blood ward to wander the Grimwood should have made her different. Really different. The kind of different you could see all over the place.

  Maybe she had expected to feel stronger. Or perhaps she had expected to be bigger than she used to be … though bigger in what way, she wasn’t sure. At least she had expected to be bigger than all the things that she had always needed but never had.

  She was a lot more sad and angry, but Poppy didn’t feel any different—not really. She had pushed open the door to her house and stepped through into the hall—looked at the wall full of all her lonely portraits and … just felt like herself.

  She knew more. That was certain. And she’d lost more too. But she was still just Poppy.

  The quiet of the house was salt in a fresh wound. There was no Dog to greet her with great galumphing leaps. Jute had promised he would return, but she didn’t know when, and without him worrying over her, the homecoming didn’t feel real. And—though she should have been used to it by now—there were no parents puttering in the lab up on the third floor or slinking up the stairs from the kitchen with bed head and snacks.

  It was home, but at the same time it wasn’t. And she was Poppy … but at the same time she wasn’t. She was something in between who she used to be, and who she was supposed to become—the Poppy she had expected. It made her head spin.

  Everything was still and empty, except for the dust motes floating through sunbeams, and the creak of the floor. Those were familiar. Her portraits stared back at her, and they all looked younger than she remembered. That was different. She had only been gone a few days, but she felt older.

  “Are you okay?” Mack asked.

  She was about to answer him with a shrug and a nod, but she paused, the truth springing to her lips before her brain could hide the words. “I’m not sure,” she said.

  They stood, looking at her portraits, until at last Poppy asked, “Do I … seem different to you?”

  Mack scratched his head. “Different—how?”

  “I don’t know … just … different.”

  “You mean, from going into the Grimwood?”

  “Yeah. I mean, shouldn’t I be like—” She grimaced. “I don’t know. Shouldn’t I be different, or—just—bigger or something?”

  “Bigger? Humans don’t usually grow that fast … do they? I mean elves have big unexpected growth surges, and so do giants. Actually, lots of the wood folk—”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “Well, do you feel different?” Mack asked.

  “No. Maybe. I don’t know.”

  Mack shrugged. “Well, when I first started coming to your house—”

  “Yeah. Did you feel different when you left the wood?”

  “Sort of. I did, but—it wasn’t really that I felt different in myself. It was weirder than that. It was more like a door that I didn’t know was there suddenly opened.”

  “A door … in you?”

  “Yeah. Maybe. Or in the world.”

  “I mean, a door did open. Our door.”

  “Ha. Ha. Very funny. But—it really was like that, Poppy. It was like there was a door I didn’t know was there, and it opened, and there was more for me … and more of me … than I had imagined.”

  “More … What do you mean more? Like what?”

  He grimaced. “Like, for me it was that you’re my friend, and you’re a human, and you know—”

  “And you have a human grandfather, that you never got to meet.”

  “Yeah, so getting to know you was like getting to know part of myself too. Plus, there was mac and cheese. I didn’t expect to like it, but then I did—a lot. And it made me wonder if my grandpa liked it too, you know?”

  Poppy pondered this for a minute until it started to make her head ache almost as much as her heart. “Let’s eat,” she said at last, and Mack was halfway across the hall before she’d finished the sentence.

  The kitchen was dark and still. It set Poppy’s teeth on edge. The house had always felt lonely to her, but she hadn’t realized just how full it had truly been—with Jute’s fussing and Dog’s galumphing around. Even her parents had held space somehow. They had a presence in the house despite their frequent absence. She just hadn’t realized it.

  Now the house felt cold, as though it was a forgotten creature crouching in a dark corner waiting for something. But at least it was dry inside, while out in the meadow, a storm had rolled in. The day had gone dark. Rain poured out of the sky as if it would flood the world. It drummed against the porch and the roof, as thunder rolled over the Hollows.

  Poppy packed their backpacks full of whatever food they could find left, and a few more supplies—mostly salt and iron, just in case, while Mack lit the stove and made hot chocolate.

  Poppy pulled the front door open to let a little more light and fresh air into the gloom, and they sat on the floor looking out as they held their steaming cups and watched the storm roll across the meadow.

  Despite the chill at her back, there was something comfortable about it that made Poppy think again of Jute. She wondered when he would be home. He’d said he would stay to talk with the Oak before he returned, but surely he would be back soon.

  She remembered too what Jute had told her after he’d saved their lives from the kelpies—that contentment is just a place that you pass through, but that it would grow as familiar as an old friend. She still wasn’t exactly sure what he meant, but watching the rain pass with Mack at her side sipping his cocoa, she thought maybe she might get it a little. She tried not to laugh as Mack tried to suck the steam off the top of his cup and blow it out again.

  She had never been more grateful for Jute’s well-stocked pantry. He had left a lovely loaf of fresh homemade bread and a hunk of cheese. Poppy put out some olives, black walnuts, fresh tomato slices, and some smoked fish. It was a veritable feast.

  The food made her body feel better, but it couldn’t take the ache from her heart, or the sting from her pride. Not only had she still not found her parents, she’d lost her Dog—and a friend. Her heart just ached and ached, like a tide, ebbing and flowing with every breath. Like pieces of me got carved out.

  The rain had slowed to heavy drops by the time they had stuffed themselves full. Poppy leaned back with a sigh.

  “Now what?” Mack asked.

  “Now we find the governor and ask him what he knows.”

  “Will he talk to you?”

  “It’s a market day,” she began. “There’s a good chance he’ll be there somewhere. That’s where we’ll start.”

  Mack stepped closer. “I’m coming with you.”r />
  “Mack … you can’t.”

  Mack licked his lips. “Listen, Poppy. It’s true I don’t want you to go by yourself. But mostly I just want to see it. I want to see a human town, even if it’s nothing like the cities outside the fog.” He paused and lifted his copper eyes to hers. “I’m tired of waiting too.”

  His ears began to redden. “I want to see how different other humans are from … from you.”

  Poppy felt her own cheeks get warm. “But Mack, you could get caught.”

  He grinned. “I’ll go in disguise.”

  Her mouth fell open. “Disguised as what?”

  “An old lady.” Mack rose from the kitchen table and grabbed Dog’s old blanket that lay folded neatly on the bench along the wall, wrapping it over his head and shoulders, hunching over. He stooped low and mimed holding a walking stick, hobbling across the kitchen. Poppy tried not to laugh, but couldn’t help herself. Even at the worst of times, Mack could make her smile.

  “Wait there,” she managed to say and ran for the stairs, climbing two at a time. At the very back of her mother’s closet was a dress that had belonged to her grandmother—hand sewn. It was dark brown, with light blue flowers all over it, and giant patches for pockets. She nearly fell down the stairs, running back down to give it to Mack. “Put this on,” she panted.

  He squinted a little, but didn’t argue, disappearing into the living room for a little privacy. When he returned, Poppy barked a laugh, and circled him.

  “You’ll have to wear shoes. No respectable old woman would walk through the market barefoot.”

  He pulled a face. “Fine.”

  “These might work.” She ran to the front hall and reached into the shadows under the bench to pull out Jute’s dark green ankle-high galoshes.

  Mack pulled a face, reaching for them uncertainly. Poppy held her breath as he worked to jam his feet inside.

  “How can you hear anything with these things on?” he asked, gazing around as if he needed to get his bearings.

  “Well … humans don’t hear the way elves do. We can’t feel sounds.”

  “So weird.” He stood up and shot her a grin. “Hope I can walk.” He took a few tentative steps, rocking back and forth like a tipping ship.